Re: Hot List
On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 10:52:19 +0100, Harriet Bazley wrote: surely you can work together to either produce a patch, or to persuade someone who might already know how to code in C to produce a patch. I'm not sure it's very realistic to expect a random C coder out of the kindness of his heart to download the source to a program of the complexity of a web browser, work out how one specific piece of it currently functions, and alter that part without breaking anything else... but I suppose that's how open source software is intended to work... Oddly enough that's exactly how it's intended to work -- it's certainly how pretty much every contributor to NetSurf got started. You don't think we all sat around one day and said Hey, let's write a web browser do you? To turn your argument back around -- I'm not sure it's very realistic to expect project maintainers to continue to support a platform which none of them run and which has no active maintainer to help -- where despite there clearly being a number of engineers who still run the project and who have the requisite skills, noone can be found to provide what little support would be needed to keep the project on-track. But I suppose that's how platform support atrophies and is eventually removed. D. -- Daniel Silverstone http://www.netsurf-browser.org/ PGP mail accepted and encouraged.Key Id: 3CCE BABE 206C 3B69
Re: Cookie dates
On 27 Apr 2015 as I do recall, Gavin Wraith wrote: In message 392690ba54.harr...@blueyonder.co.uk Harriet Bazley li...@orange.wingsandbeaks.org.uk wrote: I've been told by a webmaster that Netsurf doesn't log into his site properly because the timestamps on the cookies that it is creating are set wrongly (that is, they are set to expire in 1970). Is there any way of manipulating the cookie data manually to check this theory? I think so. The file Choices$Write.WWW.NetSurf.Cookies appears to be a TSV (tab separated variable) file. The first 8 lines are comments, starting with a hash (#). The 8-th comment line shows what the fields in each line mean. For example the 8-th is date of expiry, the 9-th the date last used. It should be straightforward to manipulate this data, e.g. with a StrongED script. I would be happy to provide you with one if you say what it is you would like it to do. I think NetSurf handles cookies internally, loading the file on startup and saving them out on shutdown. Yes, it looks as if they get written back on quitting. Which makes sense, but renders my proposed experiment rather moot, unfortunately, since it wouldn't of course alter the data in memory actually being used. But I think this may be a red herring in any case. I managed to get the current batch of cookies for this site to reset their dates to the current era as an unexpected side-effect of using the 'Remember me' option (which I take it saves cookies intended to be reused between sessions). After quitting and reloading Netsurf is now displaying and presumably sending out the reloaded data with correct(?) expiry dates of June 28th instead of January 1970, but the site still isn't accepting the log-in properly -- apparently not the cause of the issue after all. -- Harriet Bazley == Loyaulte me lie == Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Re: Hot List
On 29 Apr 2015 as I do recall, Daniel Silverstone wrote: On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 10:52:19 +0100, Harriet Bazley wrote: surely you can work together to either produce a patch, or to persuade someone who might already know how to code in C to produce a patch. I'm not sure it's very realistic to expect a random C coder out of the kindness of his heart to download the source to a program of the complexity of a web browser, work out how one specific piece of it currently functions, and alter that part without breaking anything else... but I suppose that's how open source software is intended to work... Oddly enough that's exactly how it's intended to work -- it's certainly how pretty much every contributor to NetSurf got started. You don't think we all sat around one day and said Hey, let's write a web browser do you? To turn your argument back around -- I think you may be misunderstanding me. I'm no C coder, and I quail from the thought of obliging someone else to familiarise himself with a completely new project for my benefit. -- Harriet Bazley == Loyaulte me lie == Please all, and you will please none.
Re: Hot List
In article 20150429101112.GY23045@somnambulist.local, Daniel Silverstone dsilv...@netsurf-browser.org wrote: I'm not sure it's very realistic to expect project maintainers to continue to support a platform which none of them run and which has no active maintainer to help -- where despite there clearly being a number of engineers who still run the project and who have the requisite skills, noone can be found to provide what little support would be needed to keep the project on-track. But I suppose that's how platform support atrophies and is eventually removed. You have a very valid point. RISC OS needs a good browser: its probable that if it had one, more people would use it. But it looks like most of us who use NS on RO are users, not programmers. I have done a little programming, long ago. C I have no understanding of at all. I have looked a C source code as one of our motor controllers was programmed, and the source was in C. It left me colder than cold... Maybe you, Daniel, or one of the other programmers should write a request to comp.sys.acorn.programmer to see if you can interest anyone there in joining the team. There may well be someone who is capable, could be interested, but does not subscribe to this list. I'd do it myself, but am in no position to know how easy it will be, or what sort of things are involved. -- Richard Torrens. http://www.Torrens.org.uk for genealogy, natural history, wild food, walks, cats and more!
Re: Hot List
On 27 Apr 2015 as I do recall, Daniel Silverstone wrote: [snip] surely you can work together to either produce a patch, or to persuade someone who might already know how to code in C to produce a patch. I'm not sure it's very realistic to expect a random C coder out of the kindness of his heart to download the source to a program of the complexity of a web browser, work out how one specific piece of it currently functions, and alter that part without breaking anything else... but I suppose that's how open source software is intended to work... -- Harriet Bazley == Loyaulte me lie == The only rose without thorns is friendship.
Re: Hot List
On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 10:52:19AM +0100, Harriet Bazley wrote: I'm not sure it's very realistic to expect a random C coder out of the kindness of his heart to download the source to a program of the complexity of a web browser, work out how one specific piece of it currently functions, and alter that part without breaking anything else... but I suppose that's how open source software is intended to work... NetSurf is well compartmentalised. I suspect anybody with any experience of RISC OS C programming would find the task pretty simple. It's not as if you need to touch or look at the CSS selection code or box layout code. B.
Re: Hot List
On 29 Apr, Rob Kendrick wrote in message 20150429135240.gl11...@platypus.pepperfish.net: On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 02:42:43PM +0100, cj wrote: In article 54bbe96175li...@torrens.org.uk, Richard Torrens (lists) li...@torrens.org.uk wrote: write a request to comp.sys.acorn.programmer to see if you can interest anyone there in joining the team. There may well be someone who is capable, could be interested, but does not subscribe to this list. There has been talk in various forums about the problem. It was discussed in a *LOT* of depth on the ROOL forums not all that long ago; that discussion spread out on to the NetSurf Dev mailing list. The first thing that gets stressed is that in order to compile NetSurf (essential in order to test even the smallest change) you need to be using GCC and the autobuilder under linux. That is an immediate and very major obstacle to several people who have expressed some interest. I spent some time writing a HOWTO document outlining how to set up a cross-compiling environment using a virtual machine (so it can be done on Windows machines as well as on Linux). Sadly few people seem to have taken advantage of it. Indeed. Two people were interested, I gave up a few evenings when I should have been doing other things to document some bits and pieces as an introduction to the RISC OS front-end before they lost that interest, a couple of patches came in... and then it went quiet. -- Steve Fryatt - Leeds, England http://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/
Re: Hot List
On 29 Apr, Harriet Bazley wrote in message b2c0dbbb54.harr...@blueyonder.co.uk: On 27 Apr 2015 as I do recall, Daniel Silverstone wrote: surely you can work together to either produce a patch, or to persuade someone who might already know how to code in C to produce a patch. I'm not sure it's very realistic to expect a random C coder out of the kindness of his heart to download the source to a program of the complexity of a web browser, work out how one specific piece of it currently functions, and alter that part without breaking anything else... but I suppose that's how open source software is intended to work... ...but you'd expect someone like myself to do it for you? That's not meant in a nasty way, BTW -- I'm just filling in the unspoken bit of your argument. In the end, we're all just random C coders, and when I came on board to fix up the treeview code I downloaded the source, worked out how large chunks of it functioned and altered the bits that needed altering. I seem to recall that I also broke some fairly significant bits along the way. What you're asking for isn't hugely difficult, and would be a nice introductory project for someone wanting to get involved with the RISC OS front-end. The offers of guidance that I made to Glen a couple of months back still stand for anyone interested in picking it up. -- Steve Fryatt - Leeds, England http://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/
Re: Hot List
On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 09:02:11PM +0100, Andrew Pinder wrote: In message 54bbf0d883ch...@chris-johnson.org.uk on 29 Apr 2015 cj ch...@chris-johnson.org.uk wrote: One question I have mused over for some time is what is the fraction of NetSurf users that are RISC OS users and what fraction use other platforms. Data on the number of downloads per month for each platform would give some kind of answer to that question. A very poor answer: Linux and the BSDs for example often ship their own copies: we don't provide binaries for those platforms on our website. BTW, I was at the Wakefield Show and was expecting to donate to the NetSurf project there as in previous years. Then I realised that none of the developers were there :-( Sadly it was not economically viable. I seem to recall that last year we only just managed to break even (given stall prices and travel expenses), as well as the fact that we had basically nothing new to show for RISC OS users beyond core improvements, all of which everybody who uses NetSurf on RISC OS already knew about via this list and release announcements. B.
Re: Hot List
In message 20150429135240.gl11...@platypus.pepperfish.net Rob Kendrick r...@netsurf-browser.org wrote: On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 02:42:43PM +0100, cj wrote: In article 54bbe96175li...@torrens.org.uk, Richard Torrens (lists) li...@torrens.org.uk wrote: write a request to comp.sys.acorn.programmer to see if you can interest anyone there in joining the team. There may well be someone who is capable, could be interested, but does not subscribe to this list. There has been talk in various forums about the problem. The first thing that gets stressed is that in order to compile NetSurf (essential in order to test even the smallest change) you need to be using GCC and the autobuilder under linux. That is an immediate and very major obstacle to several people who have expressed some interest. I spent some time writing a HOWTO document outlining how to set up a cross-compiling environment using a virtual machine (so it can be done on Windows machines as well as on Linux). Sadly few people seem to have taken advantage of it. Could you point me at it? I may (emphasize _may_, not _will_) be able to take on some new development work in a few weeks. I've hesitated to volunteer for NetSurf in the past because Real Life has been getting in the way of my hobby developments for the last few years, but that may be going to change. It takes less than an hour to install the OS and get a NetSurf build going. -- Nick Roberts tigger @ orpheusinternet.co.uk Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Re: Hot List
On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 10:36:35PM +0100, Nick Roberts wrote: I spent some time writing a HOWTO document outlining how to set up a cross-compiling environment using a virtual machine (so it can be done on Windows machines as well as on Linux). Sadly few people seem to have taken advantage of it. Could you point me at it? I may (emphasize _may_, not _will_) be able to take on some new development work in a few weeks. I've hesitated to volunteer for NetSurf in the past because Real Life has been getting in the way of my hobby developments for the last few years, but that may be going to change. If you already have a Linux system to hand, then this documents everything you need to know: http://git.netsurf-browser.org/netsurf.git/tree/Docs/QUICK-START B.
